Coleman Grigsby "C. G." Witherspoon (1856-1916) and Early Deaf Smith County Texas

Born on Christmas Eve 1856 in Waxahachie, Texas, C. G. Witherspoon would go on during the 1880s and 90s to become an early settler in Deaf Smith County and a founding father of the town of Hereford.

His early years must have been difficult. His mother, Ann Elizabeth Garvin Witherspoon, died in 1862. Coleman was only five, and his little sister, Anna Elizabeth Rachel, was not yet four months old. Their father, William Anderson "W. A." Witherspoon, married again in 1871. Less than a year later, his new bride, the former Milinda "Linnie" Garvin, gave birth to the first of her nine children, five boys and four girls. The youngest, Mary Leona, was born in 1887, the year her mother turned forty.[1]

In 1888, the year he turned thirty-two, C. G., his wife, Fannie Armstrong Jackson Witherspoon, and their young son Claude moved to Amarillo. C. G. taught the first full term of school in Amarillo. Sometime later that year, the family moved to Deaf Smith County where C. G. "filed on land near the center section of the county"[2] It must have looked very promising. In 1889, C. G.'s half brother, Anderson, visited the county. The next year, Anderson, his brother Remmie, and their father, W. A., set out driving a herd of cattle and horses from somewhere around Waxahachie toward Deaf Smith County. By the Fourth of July 1890, the three men had made it to a campsite in Randall County, near present-day Canyon, Texas, just thirty miles from their destination.[3]

The Witherspoon men, C. G., his half-brothers, their father, W. A., and their families were some of the first residents of an early settlement in Deaf Smith County called La Plata. In fact, Alvie William Wilson, a grandson of W. A. Witherspoon, was the first child born in La Plata in 1892.[4] The town is no longer there. Around 1898, it moved, courthouse and all, to be close to the railroad that was coming through the county. The first attempt to rename the town had to be given up. The residents of what they called Blue Water, named for the Tierra Blanca Creek just south of town, soon learned that another community in Texas had already taken that name. So they changed it to Hereford, the name of the sturdy breed of beef cattle that men like L. R. Bradley and G. R. "Rat" Jowell had brought to the area.[5] In time, residents of Hereford came to call old W. A. Witherspoon "Uncle Billy."

According to the U.S. Census of 1910, Coleman G. Witherspoon was 54 years old and was engaged in the real estate business.[6] By then, he had established himself as a businessman and civic leader in Hereford. He was one of nine co-founders of Hereford College and Industrial School in 1902.

C. G. Witherspoon died in the summer of 1916 in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was only 59 years old. His widow, Fannie Armstrong Jackson Witherspoon, survived until 1947, when she died in Dallas at the age of 84. The two lie buried next to each other in the Waxahachie City Cemetery in Ellis County.[7]

Notes

[1] Information via ancestry.com, accessed January 2, 2020.

[2] Bessie Patterson, A History of Deaf Smith County (Hereford, TX: Pioneer Publishers, 1964), 60.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Handbook of Texas Online, H. Allen Anderson, "HEREFORD, TX," accessed January 2, 2020, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/heh02.

[6] Information via ancestry.com, accessed January 2, 2020.

[7] See the Find A Grave memorial for Fannie Jackson Witherspoon, with links to members of her family, at the following URL, accessed January 2, 2020: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/30091413/fannie-armstrong-witherspoon

Judge L(ysius) Gough (1862-1940)

When he died in November 1940, "Judge L. Gough" was described by his hometown newspaper, the Hereford Brand, as "a great leader, a true pioneer, and friend to all."[1] To this day one of the thoroughfares in the old section of Hereford, Texas, is Gough Street.

Lysius Gough was born in 1862 in Lamar County, Texas, his parents having moved there from Kentucky. As a teenager, he moved on his own to West Texas where he got a job working as a cowboy on the T-Anchor Ranch. Several times he worked a cattle drive, guiding a herd of thousands all the way through present-day Oklahoma to the rail head in Kansas. Having grown up in a strict Disciples home, he refused to drink, smoke, or swear. Noticing this, his fellow cowboys named him "Parson."

In the years that followed, Gough established himself as a community leader, serving as a lawyer and judge, and working in the cattle, farm, and real estate businesses in Castro and Deaf Smith Counties.[2]

Gough and his wife, Ida Etta Russell Gough, who died in 1904 at the age of 35, helped to establish the Christian Church in Hereford in 1899.[3] He was one of the founders of Hereford College and Industrial School in 1902.

Notes

[1] "Final Tribute Paid to Judge L. Gough in Services at First Christian Church Here Tuesday," Hereford Brand, November 7, 1940.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Christian Church, Hereford, Texas (Hereford, TX: First Christian Church, 1949), 5.

Additional Source

Article on Lysius Gough in the Handbook of Texas Online:
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgo20

Reuben Harrison (R. H. or "Rube") Norton (1860-1944)

This brief biography is part of a project designed to acquaint myself with the people who founded Hereford College and Industrial School in Hereford, Texas, in 1902.

Reuben Harrison Norton--who went by R. H. or Rube--was born in Johnson County, Texas, in February 1860. He was married to the former Lou Alice Corbett, who was seven years his junior. The couple made their first home in Stephens County, where she had grown up. In 1891, the Nortons began moving west. Rube was setting out to establish himself in the cattle business. The couple's first stop was Quanah, Texas, where they lived until 1896. Another move took them to Amarillo, where Rube owned and operated a grocery store. In 1898, the Nortons moved to Hereford even before the town was established. There in Deaf Smith County, Rube became a successful stockman. He built a reputation for raising some of the best cattle in Deaf Smith County. At its peak, the Norton Ranch covered more than 5,000 acres.[1] R. H. and Lou Alice Norton were charter members of the Christian Church in Hereford, established in 1899.[2] Having lost his wife in 1915, R. H. was a widower for nearly thirty years. He died at his daughter's home in Amarillo in 1944. The couple lie buried next to one another in West Park Cemetery in Hereford.[3]

Notes

[1] Bessie Patterson, A History of Deaf Smith County (Hereford, TX: Pioneer Publishers, 1964), 55-56.

[2] The Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Christian Church, Hereford, Texas (Hereford, TX: First Christian Church, 1949), 5.

[3] Patterson, A History of Deaf Smith County, 55-56. See the photo of the couple's gravestone at the following URL: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/143191489/reuben-h_-norton#view-photo=117535885

Samuel Shipman Evants (1846-1921)

S. S. (Samuel Shipman) Evants was born in Pope County, Arkansas, on July 31, 1846. At the U.S. Census of 1900, Evants was nearly 54 years old, had been married to Haskie McElroy Evants for 30 years, and lived in Hereford, Texas. A "stock raiser," he owned property outright in Deaf Smith County.[1] Evants had come to Hereford just a year before, in 1899, having previously lived in Marietta, Indian Territory, and Gainesville, Texas.[2] He was one of nine founders of Hereford College in 1902. Although he is not listed as one of the founding members of the Christian Church in Hereford, his daughter-in-law, a Mrs. W. R. Evants, was part of the Women's Missionary Society affiliated with the church.[3] Later in life, Evants moved further west. He died in 1921 at the age of 74 at his home eight miles west of Casa Grande, Arizona. He lies buried there in the Mountain View Cemetery.[4]

Notes

[1] Brandy Miller, ed.. Dawson, Deaf Smith, Denton and Martin, Texas Census, 1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999.

[2] Deaf Smith County: The Land and Its People (Hereford, TX: Deaf Smith County Historical Society, 1982), 119.

[3] Ibid., 538.

[4] Find A Grave memorial for "Samuel Shipman Evants."
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/21982074/samuel-shipman-evants

The Growth of Public Education in Deaf Smith County and the Demise of Panhandle Christian College

As early as 1891, 22 citizens of Deaf Smith County, Texas, petitioned for a referendum that might create a new tax. Revenues would support and maintain free public schools.[1] Voters approved the measure with only one vote in opposition. The new ordinance generated a tax of only 0.06% (six cents per $100). But it was a start. Public education began in 1893, when a one-teacher school was established in the Womble community northeast of Hereford.[2]

The years around the turn of the century witnessed some important steps toward greater support for schools in the growing county. In 1898, the year Hereford was established, four leagues of Lamb County land, set aside by the state to benefit Deaf Smith County public schools, were sold for a dollar an acre. The windfall of $17,756 generated the county's permanent school fund. The next year, a local referendum doubled the rate of tax that went to support schools, from 0.06 to 0.12%. In 1902, yet another referendum increased the tax to 0.20%.[3]

Growth in student population closely paralleled growth in tax revenues for county schools. In the spring of 1901, the public school in Hereford had 208 students. In 1906, Hereford held its first graduation ceremonies. And by 1910, the total number of students had grown to 548. That same year, the town began building a three-story school house. Local citizens contributed $2000.[4]

The growth of the public school system in the town of Hereford and in Deaf Smith County was no doubt one reason why Panhandle Christian College, which always taught the primary grades, rapidly declined during its short life.

Notes

[1] Deaf Smith County: The Land and Its People (Hereford, TX: Deaf Smith County Historical Society, 1982), 65.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 65-66.

First Christian Church and the College at Hereford, Texas

This post relates to my previous entries about Panhandle Christian College (1902-1911) in Hereford, Texas. It helps to explain why this college, affiliated with the Christian Churches in Texas, and the emerging Disciples of Christ denomination, was forced to close its doors so soon after it began.

By 1907, just eight years after it began, the Christian Church in Hereford had outgrown its building at the corner of 3rd and Main Streets. That spring, several members of the congregation made pledges of $500 and $1000--impressive sums at the time--toward the construction of a new house of worship.[1]

The next year, builders broke ground at another prime downtown location, the northwest corner of 6th and Main Streets, just three blocks north of the first building. At that juncture, in 1908, the final cost of the new facility was projected to be $13,770. By then, the church had already arranged the sale of their first building. While they waited for the new one, they met in the auditorium of Panhandle Christian College, less than a mile away.[2]

The completion of the building's exterior in 1909 created mixed feelings. The new structure was the largest, most impressive church in Hereford. In size and beauty, it would be second only to the Deaf Smith County Courthouse, completed in 1910. But the congregation could yet not pay to finish the interior. At Christmastime, members gathered in the barely finished basement. Around that same time, they learned that the projected total cost for their new building had been far too low. The new estimate was $20,000.[3]

For several years, the congregation struggled to pay their current bills while raising the money to complete and furnish their new building. In 1910, the church borrowed $10,500 from the California State Life Insurance Company. Seven years later, they received a $5000 loan from the American Christian Missionary Society, an arm of their Disciples of Christ denomination. Finally, after nearly a decade of struggle, First Christian hosted their "first regular Bible school and church services" in a newly-completed building. It was May of 1917.[4]

In those early years, when the Christian Church at Hereford was struggling to complete its building, Panhandle Christian College just a few blocks away existed on the verge of financial collapse. One reason that the school closed in 1911 was that the same group of people was trying to pay for the largest church facility in Hereford while they supported their local college.

Notes

[1] The Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Christian Church, Hereford, Texas (Hereford, TX: First Christian Church, 1949), 6. According to this source, the original members of the financial committee were L. Gough, W. L. Vaughn, Ed Connell, and T. J. Graves.

[2] Ibid., 7. The splendid building, whose exterior was completed in 1909 with tall Corinthian columns facing both Main and 6th Streets, no longer exists. In 2019, 110 years later, a relatively-simple structure stands at this location: the Parkside Chapel Funeral Home.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

A Brief History of Hereford College (3)

In January 1906, after just one semester at the helm, C. Q. Barton added his name to the growing list of former presidents of Panhandle Christian College. He was replaced mid-year by the next new president, A. C. Elliot.

Why so much turnover? Naturally, ambitious and talented men welcomed the opportunity to become a college president. But in the words of historian Fred Stoker, "after experiencing the financial pressures, debts, and small enrollments in [a] frontier town," not to mention a demoralized, underpaid staff and no endowment, it became easy to accept a job offer somewhere else.[1]

So it was that in quick succession, Elliot was succeeded by T. R. Day, who was followed by E. M. Haile, T. E. Shirley's son-in-law, and finally Douglas A. Shirley, a nephew of the great benefactor. Apparently, nearing the end of the school's existence, T. E. Shirley could recruit presidents only from within his family.

During those last few years of the college, in the spring of 1910 and 1911, First Christian Church in Hereford hosted rallies meant to shore up the financial base of the school. But real contributions never began to match financial pledges, and Hereford College ceased to exist after its May 1911 commencement.

In his evaluation of the school, Stoker mentioned the ways in which it brought benefit to the region. Specifically, he observed that in 1910 the rate of illiteracy in Deaf Smith County was 1.6 percent, an incredibly low number in a pioneer town. Many residents of Hereford loved having a Christian college for the moral tone as well as the intellectual values it brought.[2] It was a dream we wish could have lasted much longer.

Notes

[1] W. M. (Fred) Stoker, History of Hereford College (Canyon, TX: West Texas State University, 1971), 17.

[2] Ibid., 18-30. See also Bessie Patterson, A History of Deaf Smith County (Hereford, TX: Pioneer Publishers, 1964), 11.

Lockney and Panhandle Christian Colleges: Why They Died

The Christian colleges at Lockney and Hereford, Texas began with worthy goals and high hopes. If nothing else, the structures they built, remarkable in that time and place, signaled the devotion of the men and women who supported these schools. So why did both of them close so soon after they opened?

Girls' Dormitory, Panhandle Christian College,
Hereford, Texas, c. 1903 

We live at a time when the remedy for a losing team is to get a new head coach, when the answer for a poor-performing corporation is to replace the CEO. So, naturally, we wonder if the schools at Lockney and Hereford closed due to a failure of leadership. On this question, I follow the lead of West Texas historian Fred Stoker. In commenting on the demise of Panhandle Christian College, Stoker concluded that the presidents of the school could hardly have done more than they did. He described them as "men of high caliber who struggled under the impossible tasks of too few students and too little money."[1] With that, Stoker not only took the focus off of the leaders of the school at Hereford, he pointed to the real problems with which the presidents of both schools had to contend, and why most of the presidents seemed unwilling to stay with the job for very long.

The towns of Lockney and Hereford were born at a moment in history not long after buffalo hunters and U.S. soldiers closed the West Texas Indian frontier, at a time when ranchers and farmers first began to make the region a more livable place for white Americans who were moving west. As new communities began to spring up, local boosters always imagined that their town was the best place in that part of the world, and that anyone who would only visit would want to stay. They were prone to exaggerate the beauty and potential of their towns. And it seems that most of them actually believed their own propaganda. To the extent that they were sure of a future marked by rapid growth and never-ending prosperity, they were almost always wrong. How could it be otherwise? As late as the 1930s, Gertrude Stein could remark, "In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is."[2]

Take Hereford as an example. In 1902, the year the college began, Hereford was a brand new town, only four years old, in a region that was barely settled and sparsely populated. For example, in 1880, in the entire Texas panhandle, which is larger than the state of West Virginia, the federal census counted 1,607 people.[3] Also in 1880, fifteen counties in West Texas registered no population, zero people.[4] As last as 1890, there were still three counties in West Texas without a single person.[5] According to another source, as late as 1900 Deaf Smith County and its neighbor Castro County had a combined population of 500.[6]

Although Hereford grew during its early years, it did not grow as rapidly or as large as some had dreamed that it would. For example, the Hereford Brand newspaper, the town's tireless cheerleader, promoted the goal of 5,000 residents by the beginning of 1908. But two years later, in 1910, in all of Deaf Smith County the census counted fewer than 4,000.[7] Even as late as 1940, the county had only 6,494 residents. In an area of nearly 1,500 square miles, the population density came out to only 4 per square mile.[8] As scholar Carter Boren later remarked, Panhandle Christian College "was established in a part of the state about as thinly populated as one might hope to find."[9]

In addition, the relatively-few residents of the Panhandle Plains did not represent old money, accumulated wealth acquired long ago and passed down through the generations of prominent families. Consequently, even the school's big donors were not especially big.[10]

As the twentieth century progressed, the most important factor was that private schools had a difficult time competing with tax-supported schools as these became more common. Along this line, the following picture of the comparatively-huge administration building at West Texas State Teachers College in 1928 is revealing. The school, located in Canyon, Texas, a mere 30 miles from Hereford, began as West Texas State Normal College in 1910, the year before Panhandle Christian College closed.

Administration Building, West Texas State Teachers College, 1928.

For all of their enthusiasm for having a local academy, Lockney and Hereford simply could not keep up with regional competition and the high demands of maintaining a private school. As vital as they are, strong faith and good intentions cannot sustain a college.

Many communities and church groups learned this bitter lesson. The demise of Hereford College in 1911 foreshadowed the fate of not only Lockney Christian College in 1918, but that of several other schools in this region of Texas. These included Canadian Academy, a Baptist school in Hemphill County (1901-1913); Seth Ward College, a Methodist school northeast of Plainview in Hale County (1910-1916); the Lowery-Phillips School, a private boarding academy in Amarillo (1910-1917); and Goodnight College in Armstrong County, an industrial institute founded by the famous cattleman Charles Goodnight (1898-1917).[11]

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the Disciples and Churches of Christ established a total of at least 21 colleges in Texas. Of these, only three survive to this day: T.C.U., Abilene Christian University, and Jarvis Christian College.[12]

Notes

[1] W. M. (Fred) Stoker, History of Hereford College (Canyon, TX: West Texas State University, 1971), 34.

[2] Gertrude Stein, The Geographical History of America, or The Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind (New York: Random House, 1936).

[3] Handbook of Texas Online, Frederick W. Rathjen, "PANHANDLE," accessed December 22, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ryp01. See also, Ernest R. Archambeau, "The First Federal Census in the Panhandle--1880," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 23 (1950), 25.

[4] William Thorndale and William Dollarhide, Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 1790-1920 (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing, 1987), 334. The fifteen counties with no population in 1880 included seven in the Texas panhandle: Dallam, Sherman Ochiltree, Moore, Carson, Parmer, and Castro. The other eight counties were south of the panhandle: Bailey, Lamb, Hale, Cochran, Hockley, Yoakum, Terry, and Andrews.

[5] Ibid., 336. In 1890, the three West Texas counties with no population were Briscoe, Bailey, and Cochran.

[6] Bessie Chambers Patterson, "Hereford: From Cow Town to Capital of Farming Empire," 5. Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Research Center, Canyon, TX.

[7] Ibid., 10-11.

[8] Carter E. Boren, Religion on the Texas Frontier (San Antonio, TX: Naylor Company, 1968), 250.

[9] Ibid.

[10] "Early colleges in the Panhandle were always in a financial bind as they would receive pledges for large sums, but actually received little or no money except tuition. Enrollment was small. Salaries for teachers were meager, normally $50 a month if the money [was] available." Deaf Smith County: The Land and Its People (Hereford, TX: Deaf Smith County Historical Society, 1982), 66.

[11] For information about these schools, see the relevant sections of the following two works: Donald W. Whisenhunt, Encyclopedia of Texas Colleges and Universities (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1986), and Charles R. Matthews, Higher Education in Texas: Its Beginnings to 1970 (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2018).

[12] D. Duane Cummins, The Disciples Colleges: A History (St. Louis, MO: CBP Press, 1987), 84.